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Well, now lets see here....

In the brief "Closing Arguments" segment on Wednesday's "Nightline," ABC's Terry Moran credulously repeated the White House contention that Barack Obama didn't bow to the King of Saudi Arabia last week at the G-20 summit. As video of the incident played, Moran narrated, "He sees King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Goes in for the hello. There's a hand shake. Obama bends at the waist. But was it a bow?" [Audio available here.] He then recited, "The White House called it a lean, pointing out the King's shorter than the President." Inviting people to respond on his Twitter page, Moran wondered,...

With Easter four days away, the Great Church Search is on for the Obamas, who are seeking a presidential place of worship in Washington nearly a year after a divisive break from their Chicago church and the incendiary sermons of its controversial pastor. White House aides and close friends of the family have been quietly checking out D.C. churches on a shortlist - maybe a dozen in all - and attending services, speaking with pastors, reverends and rectors and reporting back to the Obamas, said one White House source familiar with the search.

A decorated ex-cop who claimed he tested positive for cocaine because he ingested the drug during oral sex with his girlfriend can't have his job back, a Manhattan judge has ruled. Supreme Court Justice Eileen Rakower last month shot down helicopter pilot Jon Goldin's attempt to overturn his April 2008 dismissal from the NYPD. Goldin, a 15-year veteran, tested positive for cocaine in October 2006 in a random drug test using hairs from his arm. Goldin's lawsuit said the cocaine in his system was the product of "passive ingestion" from performing oral sex on girlfriend Coreen McCarthy, who, once he...

President Obama, who has made massive strides to expand abortion rights in his first few weeks in office, is looking forward to a "dialogue" with Catholics, who by church law are pro-life, when he speaks at the school's commencement this spring. The confirmation came at a news briefing today from presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs to Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House. "What is the president's reaction to the 50,000 people already who've signed petitions joining the Catholic bishop of Fort Wayne, South Bend in objecting to his addressing the graduation and receiving an honorary degree from Notre...

Gore to publish follow-up climate book NOBEL Peace Prize winner and former US vice President Al Gore will publish a follow-up to his global warming awareness bestseller "An Inconvenient Truth" on November 3. The book will be called "Our Choice" and will describe solutions to global warming, the environmental crusader and US publisher Rodale said today. "An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people with the message...," Mr Gore said. "Now that the need for urgent action is even clearer with the alarming new findings of the last three years, it is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves...

<p>Most students at Columbia do not have firsthand knowledge war. Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds to television, film, and print.</p> <p>The more sensitive among the struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves where parents were time memories, or incorporating into our framework of reality as depicted by a mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war-the sounds and chill, the dead bodies-are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experienced down and tour hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task. Two groups on campus, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Through the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.</p>

Under the link is the actual transcript of Hussein's speech ! He is claiming his father, after the March 7th, 1965 Voting Rights March in Selma AL, got a ticket and came to the U.S. ! How could his father come to the U.S. in 1965 and meet his mother if BO was born in "August, 1961" ??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdYByptC8mY (Parenthetical "1965" inserts added for clarity) Here is the transcript: Yet something happened back here in Selma, Alabama. Something happened in Birmingham (in 1965) that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called, “Ripples of hope all around the world.” Something happened when...

Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President's Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics. I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated. President Bush had restricted federal funding...

One of the catchphrases I continue to hear are the talking points blaming everything that is bad or can be portrayed as bad on "the last eight years." Obama has talked often about "hope" and "change" and "transcending the tired politics of the past." But that's all it ever was: talk. In reality, he has pushed the blame-game of politics of personal destruction to a whole new level. You never heard President Bush blame 9/11 on Clinton, or talk about inheriting "failed policies" that allowed 9/11. Not once. You never heard George Bush single out media critics by name for...

Clearly the Obama administration has not brought comfort to the markets in its initial weeks in office. The President and his team have also failed to bring clarity or coherence. Their massive agenda is not only ambitious, bold, and expensive, it is contradictory. Take the President's new budget proposal, for instance. In order to pay for the massive expansion of government spending, including $634 billion for health-care reform, Obama proposes to resort to the time honored populist tradition of "taxing the rich," meaning families making in excess of $250,000. Despite the administration's incessant cry that the government should prop up...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday denied offering Russia a deal in which Washington would slow deployment of a missile defense shield in Europe in exchange for Moscow's help in a nuclear stand-off with Iran. The New York Times reported that Obama had sent a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month suggesting he would back off deploying a new missile defense system if Russia helped stop Iran from developing long-range weapons. "The report that was in The New York Times didn't accurately characterize the letter," Obama said after meeting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is comparing the stock market to the daily tracking polls used during campaigns, saying that paying too close attention to Wall Street's "fits and starts" could lead to bad long-term policy. Obama spoke to reporters Tuesday after meeting in the Oval Office with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Obama said he is not measuring policies against "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market," but by whether lending is flowing more freely, businesses are investing and the unemployed are going back to work. He said he is "absolutely confident" that those things will happen....

When one observes the difference between what President Obama says and what he does you begin to wonder if we elected Sybil. His word and deeds are so widely diverse that if he is not suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder then he is simply being a typical disingenuous politician.

During the Monday 12PM EST hour of MSNBC news coverage, anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed conservative film maker John Ziegler, creator of ‘Media Malpractice,’ a documentary on media bias against Sarah Palin, and denied any such bias: "Well, let me ask you, you called the treatment of Sarah Palin and her family a, quote, 'media assassination, one of the greatest public injustices of our time.' Is that a little strong? Are you and her a little thin-skinned?" Ziegler responded by pointing out O’Donnell’s own anti-Palin bias: "The evidence is overwhelming. It's continuing today. I mean, just a few weeks ago, Norah,...

It has become increasingly evident that Mr. Obama is speaking to us in code. Whatever he says means its exact opposite. A few examples: "Hope" means "Despair" "Transparent" means "Hidden from View" "Clean" means "Corrupt" "Fair" means "Intolerant and Unjust" "Fiscal Responsibility" means "Debt" "Change" means "More of the Same" "Peace" means "There will be War"

President Barack Obama applauds former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009.

'Climate change' moralists are always talking about the need to take responsibility/set an example in the face of the imminent planetary apocalypse. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I read this (in the New York Times): WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat. “He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?� said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small...

You'd think, listening to Portland Mayor Sam Adams' apologies for his poor judgment in having sex with a teenager, that the whole thing was a passing mistake. A misjudgment, maybe, covered up by a pro forma lie in the heat of a campaign. When pressed, Adams on Monday reversed that long-standing lie about his 2005 relationship with a young man named Beau Breedlove and admitted that it was sexual, not platonic or mentoring. Adams apologized Tuesday for lying and for pressuring Breedlove into lying, too, when the rumors about them first arose in 2007, early in the mayoral campaign. Adams...

An obligatory link on a day when she’s ripping “pathetic” smearmongering bloggers in the pages of Esquire and the Trig Truther-in-chief is poised to win Best Blog. She serves: [I]s your paper really still pursuing the sensational lie that I am not Trig’s mother? Is it true you have a reporter still bothering my state office, my very busy doctor (who’s already set the record straight for you), and the school district, in pursuit of your ridiculous conspiracy?…Come on Mr. Doyle and Mr. Dougherty, I so desperately want to have even a tiny bit of faith in the ADN. And...

She'll get over it.

Echo Park resident Joseph Lee doesn't necessarily look like the leader of a musical movement. Blanketed in thug-like tattoos, a menacing goatee and often photographed in bandanna and Tupac Shakur tee, Lee could easily pass for a long-lost member of Cypress Hill. Yet under the sobriquet Deadlee, Lee is arguably Los Angeles' most prominent gay rapper, having helped organized the first national "homo-hop tour." In spite of frequent censure from the greater hip-hop community, a vibrant gay hip-hop subculture has evolved -- both locally and nationally -- with the clear-cut goals of defying bigotry and realizing self-expression. Los Angeles has...

Judicial Watch: Blagojevich Contacts wth Obama, Biden, Transition Team Today, JudicialWatch.org posted a press release with documentation they obtained through a FOIA request related to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s contacts with Barak Hussein Obama and his transition team: Washington, DC — January 5, 2009 Includes December 3, 2008, Letter to “Rod” Signed by Obama Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich through the Freedom of Information Act related to Blagojevich’s contacts with President-elect Obama and his transition team. The documents...

Even as Israelis and Palestinians plunged deeper into conflict, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama remained silent, refusing to budge from his one-president-at-a-time mantra. Obama takes office on Jan. 20 but has not commented on the Middle East crisis since Israel launched attacks on Gaza nine days ago. His advisers insist that only President George W. Bush can speak for America until then. The Palestinian death toll in nine days of Israeli attacks has risen to more than 500. Hamas, which ended a six-month ceasefire, has fired rockets deeper into Israel than ever before, hitting major cities and killing four Israelis. While...

In the midst of two wars and an intensifying economic meltdown, Barack Obama had to take time off last week to answer questions from federal prosecutors investigating charges that the governor of Illinois had put the president-elect's former Senate seat up for sale. With his own lawyer by his side, Obama sat down Thursday with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's staff to tell what, if anything, he knew about Gov. Rod Blagojevich's efforts to cash in on appointing Obama's Senate successor

Get ready for the geek-in-chief. President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign. That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon. Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical_matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd:...

"The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking..."

Obama has admitted two things today regarding the spreading scandal engulfing Governor Rod Blagojevich: Team Obama did have contact with Team Blagojevich recently, and Obama is not making a firm denial of wrong doing. Instead he is expressing ‘confidence’ there was no wrong doing. While the liberal rags (thank god these dinosaurs are facing financial extinction) keep trying to spin the fact Obama did not participate directly in discussions, we know members of the team are the responsibility of the team leader (thus Bush is responsible for Libby, etc). What is important is how the teams communicated, not what Obama...

Fox news, other news channel, presser coming up.

David Axelrod sent a statement out this evening via Obama transition team spokesperson Jen Psaki saying he was “mistaken.” Here are the entire two sentences of the statement: “I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject.”

WASHINGTON - In the last month of the presidential campaign, it was one of Barack Obama and Joe Biden's strongest attack lines: John McCain, they warned, would "tax your healthcare benefits for the first time ever." But now, some Congressional Democrats in charge of health reform are talking about doing just that. They would not go as far as McCain, who wanted to end the tax exclusion entirely for employer-sponsored insurance, which excludes money spent by employees and their employers on health benefits from income and payroll taxes. But some key Democrats are talking about limiting the benefit for workers,...

Since his election, Barack Obama has spent at least three Sunday mornings skipping church and working out in a gym, according to Politico.com. Well, he could do worse. The president-elect could take Washington Post religion maven Sally Quinn’s advice and attend services at Washington National Cathedral. There, he would find so much lukewarm liberal hogwash that it might make him long for the conspiratorial but biblically spiced rants of his old Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Quinn, co-moderator of the Newsweek/Post On Faith online column, wrote an op-ed on Nov. 22, “A Church for the Obamas,” calling the National Cathedral “the...

Thank you Tom DeFrank for asking the Idiot Question of the Week: Tom DeFrank: Mr. President-elect, as we all know we’re — as we all know, we’re two — two days away from the biggest shopping day of the year, and a lot of retailers are worrying that this year it could be a disaster that this economy can ill afford. Do you — do you have any shopping advice for nervous consumers? And are you planning to hit the malls yourself on Friday? OBAMA: Well, we are going to do some — some Christmas shopping. And Malia and Sasha...

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne asks Obama advisers whether his appointments herald a shift to the center and is told that the answer is No: Obama's selection of a team of highly skilled pragmatists has already been described as a move to the political center, but Obama advisers and longtime acquaintances say that this is a misreading of the incoming president and his approach. They describe it as combining a practicality about means with an overriding concern about the corrosive effects of growing economic inequalities... Washington often divides the Democratic policy world between progressives and pragmatists. With Obama, as yesterday's...

This arises out of the Elian Gonzalez mess back in the Clinton years when the boy was forcibly removed from his home at gunpoint by federal agents. Then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder flatly denied in an interview with Fox News that the child was taken at gunpoint. Judge Andrew Napolitano nails him. More . . .

Nothing like a budget crisis to bring to out the flinty New Englander in Mayor Bloomberg. "Wear a sweater if you're chilly!" the mayor admonished city workers as he ordered city thermostats turned down low despite the freezing cold, according to the Daily News. In the next breath, the mayor also warned city workers to gird for massive layoffs. "You're trying to plan, if you're a city worker, whether you're going to have a job. You have to start worrying about that and plan," Bloomberg said, according to the News. "There's an awful lot of the 300,000 municipal employees who...

It appears that the Obama's backtrack on lobbyists in our new politics will not be the last. Hot Air is keeping track, and I'll be sure to keep all of you posted as well with my own observations. So what's the big beef now? Remember back when Obama could afford to say things without any consequences and he said this:

"But if she wants to run for president she's gonna have to get somebody to move to Anchorage, Alaska and help her take her game to another level," he said smiling. "Let's be clear about this ... it's really cold there most of the year."

By now you’ve all heard the Fox News report last week that “unnamed� former McCain advisers leaked that Sarah Palin was confused about whether Africa was a continent, and which countries were in NAFTA. I was perfectly happy staying under the radar as an anonymous source for Fox News‘ Carl Cameron, but now that Palin has accused her accusers of being “unprofessional…jerks…cowards… taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news� and begun to cast doubt on the Fox News report, maybe she’s right to a certain extent. For those of us on the McCain...

By popular demand, the list of expired Obama statements... Consumers should be aware that promises, pledged, and soul-healing rhetoric are only effective for a limited time; upon expiration they become "just words." IRAQ STATEMENT: “Based on the conversations we’ve had internally as well as external reports, we believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began. That would be the time frame that I would be setting up,” Obama to the New York Times, November 1, 2007 EXPIRATION DATE:...

RALEIGH, N.C. – Barack Obama accused Republican rival John McCain on Wednesday of stooping to low tactics by labeling the Democrat a socialist. "I don't know what's next," Obama, the presidential candidate, said at an outdoor rally in North Carolina. "By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich." Obama turned to ridicule to rebut McCain's daily references to Obama's encounter with "Joe the Plumber." McCain has capitalized on a moment when Obama told an Ohio plumber that he...

We've been hearing some pretty hysterical things said by Barack Obama's critics about Obamanomics. Socialist. Destroyer of wealth. Enemy of small business. So, here's a primer on how Obama, if elected, will be "spreading the wealth around" in the next four years—and why he's far from a socialist radical. And even, to a struggling but hopeful entrepreneur like myself (call me Jack the Writer), not cause for alarm. Let's begin with some historical perspective. The United States responded to the last existential crisis faced by Americans—the triple-headed threat posed by Depression, Fascism, and Communism—by raising taxes and going into debt,...

Democrat Barack Obama said today there is no reason to believe that he is more likely to be tested by an international crisis if elected than if rival John McCain is, and said the important question is how the next president responds. "Whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with a whole host of challenges internationally -- and a period of transition in a new administration is always one in which we have to be vigilant," Obama said after meeting here with his team of national security and foreign policy advisers. He was responding to a...

CLOSING THE DEAL A Roadmap for Campaign 2008’s Homestretch By Guy Benson (www.guybensonshow.com) and Mary Katharine Ham (www.weeklystandard.com) Editor and Contributor, Ed Morrissey WHO ARE WE? Allow us to put our cards on the table at the outset: We are two young conservative journalists—both in our 20s. Unlike many of our peers, we are not swept up in Obamamania and would prefer John McCain to win the election. We’ve teamed up with seasoned blogger extraordinaire, Ed Morrissey, whose careful and thoughtful pursuit of the truth—even when it benefits his political opponents—is respected across the blogosphere. In that spirit, we are...

On today’s episode of “Ellen,” Joe Biden told Ellen DeGeneres “that if I lived in California, I would vote against Proposition 8.” This initiative reads, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Yet in his debate with Sarah Palin on October 2, Biden said that “Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue weighed in on this today: “Proposition 8 is a civil initiative that would secure marriage as an institution that is exclusively between a man and a woman, and Joe Biden...

Accusing API of colluding with American internet bloggers in an effort to bring down her husband, Mrs Obama said she decided to call API ...snip... Mrs Obama was angered and she came out loud with the following: “.... There is no shame in being adopted by a step father.

West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee. Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said. A Mahoney spokesperson would not answer questions about the alleged affair...

Rush Limbaugh, in today's show, referred to Clarence Thomas' book "My Grandfather's Son" to reveal Biden's slippery approach during Thomas' Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Here is what Claremce Thomas wrote about it in pages 235 and 236 of that book. Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said. ”I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist...

All politicians have a basic stump speech that they stick to when campaigning on the road. However, when Sarah Palin gives her stump speech the Associated Press claims, in a story written by Sara Kugler, she is sticking to a "basic script" like some programmed robot (emphasis mine): John McCain took a risk in picking little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, but now the campaign's playing it safer. She's sticking to a greatest hits version of her convention speech on the campaign trail and steering clear of questions until she's comfortable enough for a hand-picked interviewer later...

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick. [READ MORE BELOW]